seanharper

6 ms·

1.
by seanharper 3y ago
The national flood insurance program shows one of the downsides with government participating in the private market (there are some plusses as well) - their rates were set too low, and that created a group of people who were politically mot
2.
by seanharper 3y ago
People will always be willing to pay a premium to live near the ocean. There are some places where that premium will be too high except the very very wealthy - living on a barrier island - for example. In order to enjoy living in places wh
3.
by seanharper 3y ago
+1 for metal roofs -- I run an insurance company that specializes in high risk areas. Metal roofs are a superior technology to shingles and tiles.
4.
by seanharper 3y ago
In Florida Citizens is the largest homeowners insurance company and it competes vigorously with the private market. The issue with Citizens is that it does create a lot of financial risk for the state, especially since it doesn't buy a
5.
by seanharper 3y ago
Here is a decent summary from one of the weather modeling firms about the impact of global warming on hurricane strength -- https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/kcc-mainwebsite-dev/publi...
6.
by seanharper 3y ago
The issue in Florida is also idiosyncratic to the state -- in addition to macro factors such as an increase in reinsurance costs (driven by increased cost of capital) and increased weather volatility (driven at least in part by global warmi
7.
by seanharper 3y ago
The issue in CA is idiosyncratic to the state. In 2020 the average price of homeowners insurance in CA was $1,241 and in Illinois was $1,144. It probably doesn't make sense for California to be only 8% more expensive than Illinois. h
8.
by seanharper 3y ago
I don't think that's a fair characterization of how pricing works in homeowners insurance. Every time you want to change prices, you need to justify the price change to the regulator using the actuarial math. The regulator'
9.
by seanharper 3y ago
I am the CEO of a tech company that provides homeowners insurance in hard to insure places. I don't think it's really a bad thing for a company like Farmers to cut costs. Insurance companies are by and large pretty bloated from a
10.
Using Tech to Speed Recovery from Hurricane Irma(medium.com)
22 points by seanharper 9y ago|2 comments
11.
by seanharper 13y ago
+1 -- Chicago is top 5 in startup/vc activity, has a number of big/successful tech companies -- groupon, orbitz, 37s, Braintree, etc. Google has nearly 3000 people there (including the 2500 or so from Motorola mobility). There is
12.
by seanharper 13y ago
There is actually the capability to do an instant transfer over visa and mastercard networks as well, but it is somewhat expensive (>0.20) -- the pin debit networks are smaller and more willing to negotiate this sort of thing, and since
13.
by seanharper 13y ago
They are not using ACH for this, but rather probably using the PIN-debit networks such as star, interlink, nyce and accel.
14.
by seanharper 14y ago
Recently more so, for example they recently legalized concealed weapons, and the current VP candidate Ryan and also their current governor are both pretty extreme. Historically Wisconsin has been a pretty progressive state, similar to its n
15.
by seanharper 14y ago
Hey Conductr - we have been able to replicate the issue, it appears to only impact 1 merchant account provider. I suspect it has to do with something changing in their API. Our focus has certainly been more on Samurai, especially since the
16.
by seanharper 14y ago
Hello everyone -- this has been an interesting and painful conversation to watch. I am Sean, co-founder of FeeFighters. Integrating the acquisition of a small company into a large company is hard. I suspect there are very few acquisitions
17.
by seanharper 14y ago
Hey everyone -- integrating a company after an acquisition is hard. Several of the people who were involved in marketing and customer support left as part of the acquisition, and we needed to spend a few months building up a bigger team, i
18.
by seanharper 15y ago
Respect. Stripe is a very smart company solving a big problem.
19.
by seanharper 15y ago
Its not really fair to adjust for factors such as not taking time off to have kids. There are a number of biological reasons why it makes sense for women to be more involved in the early stages of rearing children than men (for example - o
20.
by seanharper 15y ago
I agree, turntable is really fun in a way that pandora is not, and the music selection is better (pandora keeps playing repeats for me and blending songs from one channel into the other channels). I think it will be a hit. However, I was lo
21.
by seanharper 15y ago
You are not giving Chicago a fair shake. I bootstrapped one company in Chicago and raised money from local angels and funds and coastal angels and funds. Venture funding in Chicago has become significantly easier to come by than a few year
22.
Massive Indestructible Botnet(computerworld.com)
102 points by seanharper 15y ago|45 comments
23.
by seanharper 15y ago
This is fascinating, and I would really like to try this at some point. However, I am 30, married and have a 1 year old kid. Does anyone have any similar resources, examples, for people who have done this with kid(s)?
24.
by seanharper 15y ago
Did you actually read dodd frank? Because you are completely wrong about what it says. The Durbin amendment to Dodd Frank is a reduction of interchange fees for debit cards issued by large banks . It impacts ~50% of debit cards, which
25.
by seanharper 15y ago
I think its debatable whether american apparel did well because they were vertically integrated / located in the US, or in spite of it. Nucor is another example frequently cited as a company innovating in a shrinking industry. But they hav
26.
by seanharper 15y ago
The terminology of payments is so weird: Payment processors refer to their business customers as "merchants". Entrepreneurs ALSO refer to their payment processors as "merchants".
27.
by seanharper 15y ago
I started FeeFighters, which is like Kayak for merchant accounts. I have seen a lot of misery from folks who used the recurring API of the gateways (such as auth.net, braintree, etc). If you are going to do recurring payments either roll yo
28.
by seanharper 15y ago
Pretty much every gateway has some kind of tokenization solution (or reference transaction solution) that accomplishes the same thing. They all call it something different and try to make it seem like it is unique, which can be confusing.
29.
by seanharper 16y ago
The default was set at the inflection point.
30.
by seanharper 16y ago
Search is so broken. The web was a better place 5 years ago, before Google started to lose to the seos and spammers.

More ›